


A Half-Baked Idea

by Yrindor



Series: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics 2016 Fills [74]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cupcake Wars Fusion, Baking, Fluff, Gen, Prompt Fic, Remix, SASO 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 02:45:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7827283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yrindor/pseuds/Yrindor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aomine still isn't entirely sure how he ended up agreeing to face Kagami and Murasakibara in Cupcake Wars, but he thinks Kuroko's puppy dog eyes probably had something to do with it.  The challenge from Kagami couldn't have hurt either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Half-Baked Idea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nobetterpicture](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nobetterpicture/gifts).
  * Inspired by [SASO 2016 BR1 Aomine & Kagami Graphics Fill](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/222862) by nobetterpicture. 



> Written for Sports Anime Shipping Olympics Bonus Round 6: Remixes. Also fills the "fluff" square for OTW Trope Bingo 2016.

_"Come join us. It'll be fun," they said_ , Aomine thought bitterly as he stared at the bags and boxes laid out on the counter before him. He still wasn't entirely sure how he had been dragged into competing on Cupcake Wars against Kagami and Murasakibara in the first place. He had been firmly protesting the idea until Kuroko had said quietly, "I think it would be fun, Aomine-kun. I'd like to see that." All it took was one look from those damned puppy eyes, and any resistance he had even considered making melted. Which was how he found himself standing in an oversized kitchen staring at a small sea of bags and boxes with overly complicated-looking names.

Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't a _complete_ disaster in the kitchen, thank you very much. He could make a sandwich well enough, and he had never _actually_ poisoned anyone the way certain coaches had. But he had no idea what the difference was between pastry flour and bread flour and all-purpose flour, or what he was even supposed to do with small jars of citric acid and ascorbic acid sitting on the edge of the table (or if they were left over from someone's science experiment and he wasn't supposed to use them at all; he was pretty certain food _wasn't_ supposed to contain unidentified chemicals, especially not ones with names as ominous as those).

Still, a promise was a promise, and even if he hadn't been looking for another chance to one-up Kagami, Kuroko had told him all excitedly that morning that he couldn't wait to see the episode when it aired, so he had to give it his best shot. He had the recipe his grandmother had written out for him for chocolate cupcakes (covered in her own annotations, because "her darling little grandson was finally following in her shoes," and she wanted to pass on all of her tips and tricks), and since he wouldn't have been doing this if it weren't for Kuroko, he decided he'd try to make a batch of vanilla as well. After all, it couldn't be that hard to replace the chocolate in the recipe with vanilla, could it?

He was nearly defeated before he even started when his apron attacked him and wrapped its strings around his neck, and he yanked at it futilely until a crew member managed to stop laughing for long enough to come to his aid. He gritted his teeth, reminded himself that he was doing this for Kuroko, and for another chance to prove himself against Kagami, and pushed valiantly on.

He had silently groaned and rolled his eyes when his grandmother had given him the recipe printed in 20-point font with every blank space filled with annotations in her microscopic hand, but once he actually started, he rapidly changed his opinion.

"Beat two eggs together in a medium-sized bowl," the instructions read, and written next to the line "if any eggshells fell in; remove them before continuing." Of course, the instructions said nothing about just how difficult it was to fish all of the fragments back out of the slippery egg, and he wasted precious minutes swearing as they slipped out of his grasp time and time again.

"Cream the butter and sugar," the instructions for the frosting said. He saw the note about not overmixing, but he unfortunately missed the one that read "start the mixer at low speed and add powdered sugar slowly," and he was met with a cloud of dust flying up from his workspace that convinced him he had somehow broken the mixer just by turning it on.

Despite everything, he managed to pull his cupcakes out of the oven with barely enough time to allow them to cool before he frost them ("don't be impatient; the frosting will melt and run off the tops if the cupcakes are too warm"). His grandmother's notes had sadly not included any ideas for decorating, but he remembered Murasakibara all the way back in middle school declaring that sprinkles made everything better, so he grabbed the container of sprinkles from the counter, threw them on top of the lot, and declared it good enough.

It no longer felt good enough when he brought his tray of somewhat lopsided, unevenly frosted cupcakes out alongside Kagami's trio of creative flavors, all plated in a neat checkerboard, and Murasakibara's towering sculpture of brightly-colored cupcakes, which he was sure had to violate at least one, if not several, rules of physics.

When asked by the judges to describe their creations, Kagami talked about blending distinct yet complementary flavors into a single, new creation, and Murasakibara talked (remarkably articulately) about trying to capture the childhood joy that cupcakes were often associated with. Aomine had nothing so articulate to say, fumbling his way through something he couldn't even remember afterward. Kagami and Murasakibara both gave him pitying looks when he finished though, which he thought couldn't be a good sign.

He was certain he had absolutely no chance of winning against either of them, so he was speechless when the judges read off his name as the winner. At first he thought he must have misheard, but Kagami and Murasakibara looked just as shocked as he was.

He decided not to tell Murasakibara that the idea for the sprinkles that had ultimately won him the competition had been inspired by Murasakibara's own words.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and feedback are welcome and appreciated.


End file.
